Pro-Palestinian protestors demonstrate illegally, cops do nothing; kids learn antisemitic slogans in Philadelphia

January 7, 2024 • 11:10 am

All over the Western world, aggressive pro-Palestinian protestors are breaking the law, blocking traffic and shouting slogans. Yes, this is a form of civil disobedience, but it differs from the classic civil disobedience of the civil rights movement of the Sixties—a movement that was actually effective—in three ways.  First, the pro-Palestinian protestors do not want to get arrested, and certainly don’t want to get hurt, but that was the explicit aim of Martin Luther King’s nonviolent protests. For it was the sight of peaceful protestors having police dogs attack them, getting bashed with billy clubs, and being drenched with fire hoses, that outraged the world and eventually bent the moral arc towards justice.

Second, the pro-Palestinian protestors break the law by deliberately inconveniencing people by blocking traffic—a tactic that won’t make anybody sympathetic towards them, either on the scene or watching their antics from afar. In contrast, the civil rights protestors marched peacefully alongside the road, sat in at lunch counters, or tried to get black people to vote—tactics that outraged racists but didn’t inconvenience anyone.  As far as I can see, these pro-Palestinian demonstrations are attempts to intimidate people by being loud, aggressive, and shouting threatening slogans (The well known “From the river to the sea. . . ” chant was always intended to call for the end of Israel and the expulsion and/or death of Jews. The “river to the sea” phrase is in fact in the original charter of Hamas.)

Third, in many of these pro-Palestinian demonstrations, the police stand by and allow the protestors to demonstrate illegally, often blocking traffic.  In one case, below, the cops even brought coffee to the protestors! (Granted, the movement paid for it, but, like employees of Uber Eats, the cops had to carry it from Tim Horton’s over a blocked bridge to the bawling keffiyeh-clad miscreants.)

Here’s one in Seattle (sound up). Cops do nothing.

Here they block the airport in Portland. (I don’t endorse the opening cartoon, which immediately segues into the video):

Below is the kicker: Toronto cops bring Tim Horton’s hot coffee (and it looks like donuts, too!) to the pro-Palestinian protestors.  The cops act are acting like Saint Bernard dogs and of course do nothing to break up an illegal demonstration.

Here’s an article from Canada’s conservative National Post about the reaction to the cops acting as waiters. Click to read:

An excerpt:

Facing mounting criticism for an alleged tolerance of a series of road-closing anti-Israel protests, Toronto police members have sparked renewed outrage thanks to a video showing them delivering coffee to said protestors.

Posted to social media platform ‘X’ at 2 p.m. on Saturday by Toronto lawyer and online commentator Caryma Sa’d, the video shows a Toronto police constable — his face concealed behind a black neck gaiter — delivering a cardboard urn of Tim Hortons coffee and a stack of cups — to anti-Israel protestors occupying the closed Avenue Road bridge over Highway 401.

The bridge, located within Toronto’s largest Jewish area, was the site of numerous demonstrations by anti-Israel activists.

That prompted Toronto police to close the bridge during the protests, prompting criticism of police kowtowing to protestors over enforcing the law.

Toronto police tweeted at 1:16 p.m. on Saturday that the bridge would against be closed, and that officers would be on scene to “keep demonstrators and passing traffic safe.”

When questioned by Sa’d’s videographer, the protestor who received the coffee said that somebody had bought the coffee for them, but were unable to bring it to the bridge protestors as police were restricting access.

“The police are becoming our little messengers,” said the grinning man wearing black jacket and keffiyeh.

. . .The National Post reached out to Toronto police for comment, but spokesperson Const. Laurie McCann told the Toronto Sun that officers at the scene of the protest were “managing a dynamic situation,” and insisted that the gesture wasn’t a sign of support.

“Their top priority is maintaining order in a tense environment on the Avenue Road bridge,” she said. “In performing a helpful act today, our officer’s motivation was to help keep tensions low and should not be interpreted as showing support for any cause or group.”

Sorry, but that doesn’t wash. The cops should be enforcing the law, and someone must have given them orders not to. Such is Justin Trudeau’s new Woke Canada. One more excerpt and a tweet:

Liberal MP Marco Mendicino — whose Eglinton-Lawrence riding is home to these ongoing anti-Israel protests — urged police to start enforcing the law.

“Good intentions aside, police serving coffee and food to protestors will just embolden more deliberate obstruction of traffic, undermine public safety, and add to local frustrations,” he posted on X.

“Laws exist to prevent this. They need to be enforced!”

Right on, Mendocino!

I asked a Canadian friend about this situation, and here’s the reply:

I tend to agree with the politicians that say the cops need to enforce the law. I compare this to protests in British Columbia by people stopping clear-cutting of old growth forest. There, the federal cops (the Mounties) violently arrested people, sprayed them right in the face with pepper spray when they were being peaceful, dumped out their water so they had nothing to drink. It goes on. I have seen some of this happen with indigenous protests but that is because there is a history where indigenous people have been killed unjustifiably and the cops are now extra careful. This, I think, is a bit much and I’m frankly tired of all the coddling of these protestors. My Jewish friends in Toronto are pretty sick of it and feel unsafe.

Oh, but it’s fine when those who feel unsafe are merely Jews! Note that the Mounties actually took drinks away from the protestors. 

Below is a recent protest in London in which the protestors are pro-Houthi, which is worse than being pro-Palestinian, as the Houthis are a purely terrorist group now trying to block all ship traffic (and not just Israeli or American ships) in the Red Sea.  Yes, they’re anti-Semitic, but who cares about a bunch of Jews?

I don’t know if this demonstration is illegal, or whether, if so, the cops tried to stop it. They’re not doing that here, at any rate. “Yemen, Yemen make us proud; how many ships have you turned around?” Oy gewalt!

And this is a clearly illegal demonstration in my own town, with pro-Palestinian protestors blocking Lake Shore Drive, close to where I live. The cops did nothing. What’s worse, this happened after some prominent Illinois Democrats for whom I voted, like Senator Dick Durbin, helped raise funds for CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic relations), an Islamist organization that was designated as a terrorist group by the UAE.

From Wikipedia:

The White House disavowed CAIR on December 7, 2023, after the director Nihad Awad said in a speech “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7,” he said. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege…” he continued “And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense,” referring to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

And this is the worst one, though not a protest. It is a video of Muslim children in Philadelphia being indoctrinated in martyrdom (Jew killing) and Jew hatred, just like their young counterparts in Palestine. (MEMRI is a very reliable source.) Sound up, though there are English subtitles.

What chance do these kids have? They’ve already been propagandized to hate and approve of killing.

h/t Orli

15 thoughts on “Pro-Palestinian protestors demonstrate illegally, cops do nothing; kids learn antisemitic slogans in Philadelphia”

  2. Disgraceful. According to the KIRO-TV web site, the police eventually ordered the crowd on I-5 to disperse and “removed” the demonstrators.
    https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/demonstrators-block-northbound-i-5-near-pine-street-demand-gaza-ceasefire/4LLYBZD3RNE4PEO2ZHCOROWOLQ/

    My guess is that the strategy is to avoid people getting hurt, which could make things even worse by expanding the protest, having it turn violent, and having it continue day after day after day. Blocking the streets is illegal, but I think the city is tolerating it to avoid a worse outcome. I live in a Seattle suburb. Blocking I-5 downtown is hugely disruptive.

    My hope is that perpetrators will be identified in video and prosecuted

  3. Peaceful protest is how social change has always led to a more just society.

    Think of :

    Boston Tea Party
    Suffragette movement
    Vietnam protests
    White Rose
    The Salt March
    The Occupy Movement
    Gay Liberation Front
    Pipeline protest
    Pureora Tree Sitters
    Civil Rights
    The Singing Revolution

    … and the modern LGBTQ+ movement, which fights against book bans and limitations on free expression.

    ….

    You know me – I’m channeling my inner Titania McGrath here – but I am also actually giving exact protest movements that are presented in one children’s lit comic book titled Act by Kayla Miller (2020).

    There are no other example “peaceful protests” presented, or suggestion of The Weather Underground’s escalated “protests” which didn’t target or kill any individuals, only property, to make social change because “people weren’t listening”.

    Or… oh, Palestinian liberation.

    I suppose those are all different and it is oppressive and conspiratorial to point it out.

    [ steps off soapbox ]

    1. I know you are being satirical, TP, but not all those protests taken from Act were peaceful. The Tea Party involved destruction of private property with axes after overwhelming ships’ guards, suffragettes were often violent against individuals, protests against the Vietnam war were hardly free of violence (albeit less violent than BLM riots), pipeline protests have been violent with vandalism, arson, and train derailments, and in the cause of homosexual liberation, some activists in the days before HIV testing advocated for men with AIDS to donate blood to punish society.

      More to my point, even “peaceful” protest that is illegal but doesn’t involve hitting anyone or destroying his property does involve intimidation which is an implicit threat of violence. The protestors are saying, we are occupying your land or your street and we dare you to try to get the law enforced to move us off. If the law won’t be enforced — and it won’t — what are you going to do about it? If you don’t (dare) do anything about it, you have just transferred power to us (as well as the control of your land or your street.) If the police threaten to arrest you if you take the law into your own hands (as they do), then the state has transferred power to us also.

      “Peaceful” civil disobedience is fine when it is in a cause for “social change” one sympathizes with. But it gets very ugly very quickly when a cause one disagrees with enjoys immunity from the law.

      1. This is a discussion for another thread perhaps, but I ‘spose my point is there are materials kids are being taught and trained from in K-12.

        So maybe better radical activist training will avoid embarrassing problems like these? Better laws to accommodate the advanced activism?

        Imagine, a whole month dedicated to “Radical Activist Pride”, or “Hug a Protester” day!

  4. Antisemitism alive and well in Canada, hardly surprising with the sock boy prime minister bowing down to muslim blackmail, they will not contribute to the LPC coffers unless Trudeau calls for a cease fire in Gaza. Disgraceful.

  5. The Toronto police delivering coffee through a police roadblock is reprehensible and shows poor judgement, as the propaganda spin on it shows. If the police are reluctant to disperse a protest that requires closure of a road in case it risks public safety, fine, but they should not be acting as logistical water carriers to give it staying power. This is why the Mounties in rural areas confiscate water (or liquor in an open container in a public place) from illegally trespassing protesters. No one is pepper-sprayed merely for being at a protest, even an illegal one. If they resist being cleared, that’s another matter.

    Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that illegal acts, such as obstructing traffic and trespass, fall under Charter protections of freedom of expression if done as part of peaceful protest.* The police know this and see no point in arresting people for offences that the Crown will have no reasonable prospect of conviction. Btw, in Toronto I’m not clear if the protesters blocked the bridge or if the police closed it to prevent trouble they didn’t want to have to deal with.
    ———————
    * Most such protests have involved indigenous activists and, as Jerry’s friend sort of implies, judges and Crown attorneys bend over backwards not to inconvenience people who obstruct highways, railways, private land, and pipeline construction in the name of reconciliation of Canadians to the inevitable decolonization.

    Jerry’s friend is not quite correct on what de-motivates the police. One (singular) indigenous man named Dudley George was shot during police attempts to clear an illegal occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park in Ontario about 30 years ago. The provincial police force was hung out to dry by a news media ideologically hostile to the government at the time who had ordered the park cleared. Ever since, police culture has been to not intervene in any kind of protest, even to the point of refusing to enforce Court injunctions, where a protester might get hurt. This is partly why the trucker convoy protest in Ottawa got out of control. The Ottawa Police were simply afraid or unwilling to enforce the law.

  6. I find it troubling that the location of choice for such demonstrations is on a bridge “within one of Toronto’s largest Jewish areas” (I hope I got that quote right.. I’m on a cumbersome cellphone). Proof, in my opinion, that this is not solely about Israel. It’s intended to imtimidate the Jews who inhabit the neighborhood! What the hell are they supposed to do about it. Demonstrate, if you must, in front of a seat of power. Don’t disturb peaceful residents. That’s not right. They would raise a stink if the tables were turned. What if a mob of noisy Jews demonstrated in a predominantly Muslim quarter? Nah! Not right at all.

  7. I’m very sorry that you have to be seeing and internalizing all of these things. All very Orwellian too. I am on your side completely. And there are lots of decent folks around who feel as you do. Unfortunately not Dick Durbin. Not Bernie Sanders either for that matter.

  8. Part of why they do not expect to be arrested is the mistaken belief that one is exempted from many laws as long as it is done as protest against something. They also seem to believe that we should be living in a world where groups of leftists have final authority over where and when the rest of us should be allowed to travel.

    In a more just world, people who block interstates would by definition be guilty of obstructing commerce, and prosecuted under federal law. And individuals obstructed by those mobs should be able to sue, as they are potentially being prevented from exercising some of their rights.

    It does appear to me that the main function of the police at these incidents is to arrest any of the normies who might be driven to interfere with the protesters. That seems to me like a civil rights issue there as well.

    1. That is exactly why the police are there, Max. They have no intention of arresting any protestor unless there is a breach of the peace or, I suppose, if a VIP motorcade had to get to the airport and insufficient helicopters to carry the entourage were available.

      In an interesting development, some anonymous plaintiffs have just launched a class-action suit in Ontario seeking millions of dollars in damages against the Student Unions of York, Metropolitan, and McMaster Universities for encouraging and fostering a culture of antisemitic harassment and intimidation that interferes with the ability of Jewish students to get an education and participate in campus life. (This isn’t just chanting “Free Palestine” in the quad.) The student unions are funded by compulsory ancillary fees the universities adds to tuition for all students. (Unlike employees’ unions the SUs are still creatures of the universities.)

      Freedom of expression is not protected in Canada to anywhere near the degree it is in the United States. The news story I saw today didn’t have much detail but the gist is the abridgement of students’ representational rights by the actions of the student unions which have a duty to them, separate from any speech protections the harassers might have with respect to the university. In previous discussions we’ve had in Canada about academic freedom, the public universities are thought by our constitutional law experts to be Charter-free zones. University administrators routinely cancel speakers accused of being hurtful (or allow them to be canceled by mobs) and no one ever seems to be called to account*. So chilling of speech cuts both ways. As we saw with the Three-now-One Wise Women, now is not the time for the universities to discover their reverence for Charter rights which may not actually exist, leastwise not for student unions that take money from the very people they harass and intimidate. This is uncharted legal territory for us.
      ————
      * A tenured full professor friend of mine got fired on Friday from a university in Alberta for pressing his academic freedom too vigorously over one of these episodes.

  9. Mendicino deserves no credit. He was an inept Minister of Immigration and Public Safety who spent more time kissing up to or apologizing on behalf of his boss. In fact, he and his equally repugnant successors are the reason why our police have a difficult time enforcing laws (unless, of course, it comes to arresting people protesting against his authoritarian government), and why these criminals can get away with shooting up Jewish schools, fire bombing Jewish businesses, and harassing inhabitants of Jewish neighbourhoods without repercussions.

    1. S’pose I should give James Lindsay credit for pointing out this “choke point” idea on X — though it should be obvious I read/listen to a lot of his stuff.

  11. Update on protests in Toronto:
    The Chief of the Toronto Police Service announced today that people will no longer be permitted to congregate or demonstrate on the sidewalks of the Avenue Rd. bridge that was the site of the coffee-schlepping video and will be subject to arrest. It is already illegal to enter the roadway. This should make it unnecessary for the police to close the bridge in future.

    Good on them!

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